


Leaving Loved ones behind.

by PGT



Category: RWBY
Genre: Afterlife, Vol3 spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-22 05:58:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8275295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PGT/pseuds/PGT
Summary: Death is considered a selfish act, as the repercussions are put upon not the victim, but their loved ones.





	

Leaving Loved Ones Behind

 

Roman blinked awake, hair obscuring his right eye as he peered directly upwards. His hands were folded on his chest, his back comfortably horizontal on the ground.

He sat up slowly, without any real urgency to hurry himself. An endless platform lay around him, a train station, by the looks of it. Everything seemed masked by a white filter, no contrast between the pillars reaching skyward or the ledge where an infinitely long train bustled. 

The silhouette of a girl permeated through the muddled, white world, and his heart leapt. He couldn't determine why he got excited, nor the disappointment he felt when the girl twisted to reveal light green eyes and freckled cheeks. 

He glanced around, felt like someone should be with him that wasn't. The girl, sitting on a bench with her long legs swinging, waved to him as his gaze passed her, and after concluding that she was the only one here, he stood to come closer. She slid down the bench to create a seat for him, which he took. They sat in silence until Roman’s thoughts coiled past his tongue, echoing through his ears before he realized he spoke them.

“Where am I?”

What a stupid question, the girl couldn’t possibly know.

“I think… I think we died.”

The girl’s gentle words rippled outward, Roman almost forgetting to catch them. Did he die? He wasn’t sure. The girl didn’t look dead, he didn’t look dead either.

“Do you know how?”

How she died, he meant. She wouldn’t know how he died, He hoped she understood what he’d asked.

“An accident.”

Vague.

She elaborated, “I was killed, I think. But she didn’t mean to do it. It wasn’t on purpose.”

He hummed at her statement. “I must’ve died as well, then.”

He didn’t remember dying. Couldn’t remember anything, really. Feelings; fear, a girl, anger, violence. Roman reasoned that if his last memory was a feeling of violence, surely it was true.

They sat in silence, the girl’s expression a neutral smile, eyes soft with acceptance, Roman with his hand to his lip, tugging it in thought. Eventually they proffered more questions, He asked the girl’s name, “Penny”. She asked how he died, to which he shrugged gently. The answerless curiosity of the train in front of them. Why a train? Why hadn’t it stopped yet?

 

Neither of them noticed the third figure appear at first. Another girl with red hair and green eyes, but the colors seemed barely shrouded in the white filter everything seemed to lie beneath. She touched her chest with a hand in caution, her eyes welling with tears.

Pyrrha stood before taking in the scenery. A train station. A bench to her left held two figures, a man with his elbows on his knees, barely contrasting the bench. She wouldn’t have noticed him if he were behind the second figure. She took the barely-colored girl in, recognition gripping her quickly. A wail of horror fled past her throat. The figures turned, the ghostly man’s eyes flickered with guilty hope, dying into disappointed relief. Penny stood from the bench, arms outstretched. Her eyes glistened wetly, but she wore a genuine smile. 

“I’m so…  _ so _ sorry--” Her mouth moved to say more, but her body caved inward, forcing herself to kneel, trying to contain tearful tremors.

Penny came forward, kneeling with the other girl, wrapping her arms around her gently. “It’s okay.”

The trio wouldn’t have felt any impulse to move, had the screech of a slowing train not echoed through their white world. Roman stated his ever-revealing observation, “It’s stopping.”

Penny got up, tugging the sniffling girl along.

As the train stopped and the doors reeled open, the three entered with neither rushed nor resistant paces. They all glanced to the doors as they entered, fragmented memories flittering to their thoughts.

A girl, a friend, a lover.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! To explain something if you didn't get it: the more color a soul has, the more they remember/ the more they expected their death.


End file.
